Harnessing the literature, datasets, and models to understand continental-scale lake phosphorus recovery times
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Lakes may take years to decades to "recover" from historical and current rates of phosphorus (P) input due to the dynamics of internal P cycling (settling, resuspension, burial). Even if external P loads are reduced, lake water total P concentrations may not decrease for a long time. Lake managers need to know how long it could take to detect improvements in water total P concentrations to inform management goals, long term management plans, and stakeholder expectations. A team of EPA researches started investigating two major questions: 1) What are the important physical, chemical, and biological factors driving internal lake P cycling (and how do the relationships differ by lake ecosystem parameters? 2) If external (point source and non-point source) P load into a lake is reduced by X% how many months or years would it take for surface water total P concentrations to decrease by Y%? We will use information from the literature and lake datasets, as well as a mechanistic limnological model, to address the major questions for lakes across the conterminous United States. We seek input from workshop participants about how we can incorporate machine learning or other approaches to efficiently answer our research questions.